European Journal of Wildlife Research

, Volume 58, Issue 5, pp 781–796 | Cite as

Effects of heavy localised culling on population distribution of red deer at a landscape scale: an analytical modelling approach

Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

For many of those wildlife species with larger home ranges, the expressed annual range size may extend over many landscape units and separate landholdings. In order to be wholly effective, management of such a population for control of numbers or in mitigation of negative impacts needs to be coordinated at the landscape scale rather than the level of individual properties. By corollary, differences in management of a population in different parts of the biological range (differences in intensity or objective of management) may have significant effects on numbers and distribution across the wider landscape. Thus, management in one part of their range towards one objective may compromise the ability of managers of the same population in another part of the range, to deliver their, perhaps different, objectives. This paper offers demonstration of such landscape level effects of differential intensity of culling, focusing on open hill populations of red deer (Cervus elaphus) in Scotland. On each landholding within the wider catchment, mismatch between observed counts in a given year and population size and composition predicted from counts of previous years (on the basis of known ‘domestic’ rates of recruitment and known culls) permits identification of possible episodes of active immigration onto or emigration from that particular property/landholding. Coincidence in time of episodes of presumed immigration or emigration from adjoining land units may be used to infer movements of population between those landholdings and identify sources and sinks within the population's wider home range.

Keywords

Red deer Population modelling Landscape level management Directional immigration 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The estates modelled in the paper—and the details of counts and culls on each property—are real and not contrived simply for the purposes of illustration. They are identified here only by a code (which does not relate in any way to the actual name of the property!). I would thank the owners and stalkers for allowing me access to the data and for permitting these data to be used as the basis of this and other publications. Extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft were received from Tim Coulson, Frauke Ohl, and Alastair Ward and from two anonymous referees.

Supplementary material

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Keil House, Ardgour, by Fort WilliamInverness-shireUK

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